


The Bird In Hand

by LogicalParafox



Series: Raven's Flight [1]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Implied/Referenced Torture, Multi, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:15:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27667333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LogicalParafox/pseuds/LogicalParafox
Summary: Raven is on a solo mission to search Grimm-destroyed villages for survivors. Unfortunately for her, there are other searchers waiting for an opportunity to ambush any sent for rescue efforts.Can Raven escape Salem's tendrils?
Relationships: Raven Branwen/Summer Rose/Taiyang Xiao Long
Series: Raven's Flight [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2024197
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	The Bird In Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alucard45](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alucard45/gifts).



Raven searched the village for survivors.

The Grimm had grown bolder of late, moving in larger mixed groups and targeting towns with greater frequency, or perhaps it was simply that people living in towns, having heard of the swathes of destruction, grew more fearful and more likely to attract the very attacks they feared.

Team STRQ had been working separately more and more, with Summer off on her special missions and the rest of them given assignments better suited to their particular talents.

Raven did not hold much affection for her particular talents.

She disliked the covetous way Ozpin regarded her and Qrow, particularly after he revealed his magic and gave them the ability to change forms. The fact that she loved being able to fly did nothing to alleviate her suspicions of him and her twin’s fervent idolatry grated on her nerves.

Summer was sympathetic, of course, but she had her own special skills that took her to dark places she preferred not to bring the rest of her team into. Ever the martyr. Of course her semblance gave her considerable advantage in stealth but Raven, particularly now that she could fly UNDER THE RADAR felt that she should be included for backup.

Summer, ever the martyr, gently turned her down.

Raven kicked down a door of one of the wrecked cottages with unnecessary force, though it soothed her ruffled feathers a bit. There was no one left. She spotted several places where Grimm had clearly dug through the rubble they created to find those cowering in cellars or in attics. The once-familiar corpse smell making her eyes water. Had she really grown so soft that it bothered her now?

Summer would ask her what was wrong with being soft if she brought her leader and wife her complaints, but the part of her that had been raised in a bandit tribe KNEW that there was shame in being leery of corpses.

Raven found a several story building collapsed but for one wall still upright and smelling strongly enough that it served as a grave marker for dozens. In defiance of the veneer of civilization and Summer’s soothing influence, she inhaled deeply, fighting back her gag reflex and focusing on suppressing her body’s instinctive reactions, on engaging her senses and being fully present, fully cognizant as the reek of death brought with it painful memories. She let that younger, harsher self out into the sunlight, tearing open old wounds and letting the remembrance be a punishment for her current self for trying to forget. She clung to her hard-earned calluses despite her loving home and supportive spouses. If she lost this edge… what was she?

Raven embraced the memories that cut deeply, telling herself that it sharpened her instincts to a razor’s edge. This is what made her such a good huntress, the kind of person strong enough to defend her family. Qrow had let himself forget, that was why he was so susceptible to Ozpin’s wiles, why he needed her to stay sharp. How could all of them be safe if all of them got so soft?

Raven stared at the rubble, lost in the unpleasant memories.

Later she told herself that it was Ozpin’s fault she had been so distracted. If he hadn’t worked so ardently to lure in her brother, she wouldn’t have been doing this and she would never have been caught unawares.

Later, Raven swore she had heard it coming, had tried to flee but been overpowered.

Later, she lied.

* * *

Raven stood, looking at the rubble, telling herself she wasn’t repulsed by the smell of corpses rotting.

Thin tendrils suddenly coiled around her neck, whipping around her throat, her wrists, her arms, her legs, wrapping swiftly once they had made contact.

Raven thrashed, then froze as she felt warm blood running in several places where whatever it was wrapped around her. She hadn’t felt the wounds, but clearly the weapon had sharp edges. “Who are you,” Raven demanded, standing tall and proud, unwilling to waste her ace before she had a better read on her assailant.

They would die. That was the only certain thing. None could know that she had been captured so easily. It might give her enemies ideas.

No one answered her, the cold thin tendrils simply curled tighter, cutting off some circulation as she fought to stay still. Perhaps this was an illusion semblance, though the blood felt all too real.

“Very neatly done. Who are you and what do you want?” Raven fought not to move as the tendrils began to drag her wrists together behind her, pressing hard against the backs of her knees and wrapping around shin and thigh to force her to the ground.

“You fear,” a cold voice said from behind her, a metallic edge to it that was utterly unfamiliar but sent a chill down her spine. “My creatures can taste it on you, in the fluttering of your heart.” The voice was too close though she had not heard a footstep.

The weapon, whatever it was, snapped its coils in tight, forcing her legs to buckle and she fell to her knees, grimacing. The tendrils encasing her throat forced her chin up, preventing her from seeing whatever it was that had enmeshed her.

Raven’s heart pounded as that brief spike of fear gave rise to rage and anger and outrage that she had been so easily disabled. Damn Ozpin splitting them up, with her team this would never have happened. Their team watched each other’s backs, covered each other’s blind spots.

Raven refused to consider that it wouldn’t have happened because Tai and Summer didn’t let her use her past and her guilt and shame as a weapon with which to harm herself.

The cold voice had begun speaking again and Raven dragged herself back to the present, skin crawling from the strange weapon as the voice came closer. It echoed oddly….. and she still didn’t hear steps.

“Are you listening to me, Raven Branwen?”

Raven jerked in her bonds, fighting to turn her head and look at the speaker. “I don’t listen to cowardly ambushers,” she snapped.

The low husky laugh that followed this made the hair on the back of Raven’s neck stand on end, goosebumps rippling across her skin. “You, bandit child and murdering thief call me a cowardly ambusher?”

The person’s knowledge was impossibly vast. Raven’s stomach twisted as she struggled to maintain her composure. “Who better to recognize a brigand?” Raven snarled, fighting to keep her voice steady.

Something silver moved at the edge of her vision… a diamond shaped… blade? It gleamed like metal but it seemed to have grown from a long red tendril. The tendril… undulated, disturbingly organic and like nothing she had ever seen. “What is that?”

The bladed tendril arced up, the tip of the blade pointing at Raven’s face. “Keep a civil tongue in your head, Raven Branwen, or I will cut it from your mouth and keep your uncivil tongue in a jar.”

Raven tried to lean back as the blade wove closer, tracing along the line of her mouth as she squeezed her lips shut.

The blade forced itself between her lips, tapping playfully against her teeth as she shuddered, keeping her jaw tightly shut, tasting blood as the razor’s edge left shallow slices everywhere it touched.

A shape drifted into her view and, despite the living blade in her mouth, Raven finally saw the real threat.

This Grimm was like nothing she knew or had heard of, a bulbous sphere that floated ominously, those long red tendrils tipped with spikes and blades trailing after, twisting and shifting and rippling out beneath the thing.

The Grimm was bad. Knowing she was being held by at least one more of those things and that they were strong enough to hold her immobile was worse.

None of these horrors compared to the serenely smiling face reflected within the head of the thing.

The blade withdrew from her mouth as the face drifted closer. “Do you wish to repeat what you just said for the last time?” the face asked silkily. The blade waved back and forth behind it as if this were a charming game played between friends.

Raven stared, trying to pick out details, to memorize the death-pale face veined with darkness. “…Who are you? …..What are you?”

The woman laughed, a sound closer to happiness though her eyes remained cold, the view in the Grimm focusing in on the woman’s face. “What, my dear Ozpin never told you of his once-beloved? Salem, the princess in the tower, reduced to idle fairy tales in the retelling where he makes himself out to be ever the hero. He has grown quite wily in his recruitments, even I can admit that.”

Raven shook her head very slightly, slow tremors working through her as she stared at the not-quite human face and compared it to Ozpin’s. “…No… but he never tells anyone everything.”

“A liar ‘til the last,” the woman agreed. “We share a curse, he and I, cursed by his weakness and the perfidy of gods, but all shall be made right. Now then, tell me of Ozpin’s plans.”

The blades caressed Raven’s arms as she weighed betraying Ozpin the faithless and potentially putting her family in harm’s way.

No, even with death staring at her out of some horrible Grimm, she would never betray Summer or Tai or her brother. Exasperating as he could be, she would never sacrifice his safety for her life.

The blades dug in. “What. Are. His. Plans.”

* * *

Raven hung slack from the clutching Grimm, forcing herself to breathe steadily. She had kept her mouth shut and kept her tongue, and the woman in the Grimm seemed irritated but increasingly bored. Raven bled from hundreds of small cuts but Salem’s heart didn’t seem to be quite in it.

“Perhaps you really don’t know anything, Raven,” Salem said, tapping her fingers against her cheek, her hands as riddled with dark veins as her face. “You are admirably stubborn to protect what few secrets that professional liar may have convinced you were real to keep you loyal to him.”

The tendrils gripping Raven relaxes slightly, one of the tendrils caressing Raven’s cheek. “I suppose it’s the fact that I was once a mother too that makes me treat you with such delicacy,” Salem said with a sigh. “More’s the pity though you shouldn’t be in the field in your condition.”

Raven tried to marshal her scattered thoughts. “What condition?” she croaked, throat too tense to keep her own voice steady.

“Your pregnancy of course. Though Oz showed little care for our daughters so why should he value yours?”

Raven’s world spun around her. “My what?”

Salem paused, leaning closer to the Grimm it seemed as her face magnified, distorting even more. “You didn’t know? I can feel the second heartbeat through my little minions.”

Raven gasped, mind flicking back through nausea and changing appetites and strange incidences now laying out a pattern as the jaws of the trap closed around her heart. “No…”

“Yes,” Salem purred. “Well, perhaps when the message is delivered to your teammates their rescue attempts will bring me someone better to interrogate.”

Raven shuddered, mind racing as she tried to think clearly, rationally. The tendrils on her skin filled her with revulsion, further complicating her thoughts.

“Maybe I’ll keep your daughter,” she mused. “Do to her what Ozpin did to our children. I could let you go ask him what became of our little family when he realized he couldn’t control me any longer.”

Raven steeled herself… and shifted. The tendrils lost valuable moments when their target abruptly vanished.

In raven form she knew she had but moments before Salem could adjust her attack and Raven would be trapped once more. Well, she had always been fast.

Raven flew hard and fast, pumping her aching wings as she headed vertically, needing to put as much distance between herself and that monster as she could. She needed to think, needed to think beyond the blind panic of the lie that she was pregnant. It couldn’t be possible.

Raven flapped her wings, her mind in a turmoil as she tried to plan. A child… she wanted a child. Tai’s child. She wanted to give their child the best future…. the safest future… one without Salem in it…. but how…..


End file.
